“And if one day the Obterek prevailed, destroyed the charea? What then?” Sally asked.
“Their stated aim is to reinstate the Natural Law, but this is disingenuous. In the past they have promised certain races a return to the old, violent ways — but they lie. And the same would be true here, too.”
“So… what would they want?” Allen asked.
“What all aggressive, warlike races want — domination, complete and utter subjugation of your race. And they would be ruthless to their subjects if they ever succeeded in permanently subverting the charea and defeating us.” She paused, her gaze distant, then went on, “Five millennia ago there was a race which the Serene failed. I was not there to witness what happened, of course, but the story stands to serve as a warning should ever we become complacent.”
Sally said, “What happened?”
“The Serene brought the charea to this race, the Grayll; like your race, they were a technological, civilised people — but given to destructive internecine wars which, unchecked, would have resulted in their self-annihilation. The Serene intervened, bringing peace to their small world, and then made the fatal mistake, a hundred years later, of dropping our guard. We became complacent, left only a token force of self-aware entities in the Grayll’s system — and the Obterek struck massively, breaching the basal reality paradigm, destroying our means of maintaining the charea and driving our forces from the system. For the next fifty years the Obterek used the Grayll as little more than slave labour in order to mine the solar system of precious metals and resources. They were ruthless, thinking nothing of working to death thousands of innocent Grayll at a time, of summarily executing those they deemed to be subverting their cause. After half a century the Obterek withdrew to the fastness of their own system, leaving… leaving behind not a single living creature. Those Grayll still living at the end of the period of enslavement they put to death in the most horrific fashion. And what made the slaughter all the worse was that the Obterek had promised these deluded people ultimate freedom when they, the Obterek, had finished raping the star system. The remaining Grayll were gathered together at the site of a Grayll holy temple and… and firebombed.
“When the Obterek left, and the Serene returned… they found the incinerated corpses of ten thousand men, women and children, a terrible testament to our complacency. The Serene vowed, then, that slaughter should never happen again.”
After a short silence, Allen said, “And they would do the same to the human race?”
“Without question,” Kath replied.
Allen considered everything Kath had said. “Might the Obterek threat have some bearing on your decision to terraform the outer planets of the solar system, to promote our migration outwards? This way, spread across the system, we present a target difficult to locate and destroy?”
Kath smiled. “That is certainly one way of looking at the problem, yes. The other reason is simply that the natural evolution of a race is ever outwards, pushing into space and exploring new habitats, spreading the gene pool in a diaspora that will thus engender a greater chance of species survival.”
They were silent for a time. “It’s a big commitment you’re asking of us,” he said at last. “I mean, it’s difficult enough to think about emigrating to Australia, say, not to mention Mars.”
Kath smiled. “I know, and I do not ask lightly. But let me assure you that you would find Mars conducive to a happy life. The brochure I gave you sets out in detail everything you might need to know. Browse through it at your leisure. There is no real hurry…”
Allen caught something in her tone. “But..?”
Kath frowned. “But… we are eager to set up a vital, viable colony on Mars before the Obterek find new and potentially more lethal ways of going about their goals. We are recruiting colonists daily, and we need people like you to join us.” She finished her tea and checked her watch. “My train for London is due at twelve. I’d better dash.”
Allen smiled to himself. The banality of human concerns after such mind-stretching issues as galactic conflict…
Kath stood and hugged Sally.
“Look through the brochure, and consider what I’ve said. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact me. If I don’t hear from you in a couple of weeks, I’ll be in touch.”
Allen embraced Kath and murmured goodbye, and Sally saw her across the garden and down the front path.
She returned a minute later, smiling to herself. “Well…” she said.
He tapped the softscreen into life. “Let’s take a look, Sal. But we can’t do this without a cup of tea.”
“Good idea,” Sally said. She sat down on the bench and took up the softscreen.
Allen picked up the tray and retreated to the kitchen.
CHAPTER NINE
JAMES MORWELL STARTED work at nine that morning and by eleven he was through with his duties for the day.
He sat at his desk and considered the appearance of the blue figure last week, its pronouncement that he and the Obterek were working towards the same end, and its gift of the shimmering blue discs. For a few days he had allowed himself a flicker of hope. He had contacted Lal and demanded the latest information regarding the suspected Serene representatives… And the news was not good. The two latest suspects had vanished days ago without trace. Lal assured him that he was working personally to track down other suspects, and promised that within weeks he would be able to present Morwell with a dossier of likely candidates.
The news had dispirited him, and for days he’d sunk into a depressed state, where nothing he did mattered at all and no hope glimmered on the horizon.
His life, of late, was becoming meaningless.
Three days a week he and four other once eminent businessmen, all of them self-made millionaires, met for a round of golf and dinner at their club on Long Island. But he was becoming jaded with the game of late; he detected that his passion to win was not matched by that of his colleagues, and what was victory against apathetic opposition? He blamed the Serene, of course. Their charea had affected not only humanity’s ability to commit violence, but also robbed the human spirit of something vital, the spark of life, of fight, that made individuals, tribes, nations, want to win.
So golf accounted for three afternoons a week, and sex — such as it was — the other three. On Sunday he rested by taking his yacht out to sea and losing himself in the blue immensity for hours on end.
Increasingly these days he enjoyed the luxury of being alone. On his yacht he cut all communications, deactivated his softscreen, and simply sailed.
It was while out on the ocean just a week ago that the idea had occurred to him, and he had greeted its sudden emergence in his head with uproarious laughter.
Along with other forms of violence, suicide was a thing of the past. These days, no one was allowed to kill himself. You spasmed if you tried to slice your jugular, or insert a rifle into your mouth and pull the trigger; you were unable to jump off buildings, or under trains. He was sure, idly thinking about it, that people must have found ways around the self-harming edict. But, if so, they had not survived to pass on the information, and Morwell himself could think of no way to subvert the Serene’s charea — which was a pity as, these days, he was increasingly wondering what was the point of being alive.